Screenshot: An April 1, 2025, post by Natural Resources Defense Council/Instagram
The joke was on us Tuesday morning when an Instagram post claimed a narwhal had been spotted in local waters for the first time in over a century.
The intrigue: The post by the Natural Resources Defense Council claimed the appearance of the marine animal was a promising sign that the whale with a long, spiral tusk could make a comeback in Puget Sound.
Reality check: Then we remembered what day it was.
NOAA's Brad Hanson of NOAA confirmed it was a "great April Fools joke."
"Narwhals have never been documented in Puget Sound," Erin Gless of the Pacific Whale Watch Association told Axios.
They're typically found thousands of miles away in the Arctic Ocean near northern Canada, Greenland, and the European Arctic, per Gless, though there have been rare sightings near Alaska.
Yes, but: A narwhal sighting in Washington is not impossible — after all, a beluga from the Beaufort Sea visited Puget Sound for more than two weeks in 2021, Gless told Axios.
"When it comes to whale sightings, never say never," Gless wrote in an email.
